The present specification generally relates to 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) or 3GPP 5G machine type communication (MTC). In particular, the present specification addresses mission critical MTC between a vehicle and radio network infrastructure (vehicle-to-infrastructure, V2I) in radio-assisted road traffic management scenarios.
In the field of automotive engineering, assisted driving and autonomous driving are of increased importance. The difference between the two modes is the level of automation thereof. Namely, in assisted driving, the driver still has control of the vehicle with some automation thanks to cooperative decisions among vehicles and/or network (e.g. emergency braking when approaching the end of a traffic jam with high speed), whereas autonomous driving is without intervention of a driver. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) provide a framework (also radio communication related) for both, assisted driving and autonomous driving. From the communication point of view, assisted driving is one of the target use cases of LTE MTC services, while autonomous driving is one of the target use cases of 5G MTC services. For autonomous driving, MTC devices are embedded in vehicles/cars (vehicular MTC device, in-vehicle MTC device). Such MTC devices need to enable V2I radio communications and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) radio communications as operation modes. For these operation modes, strict latency and reliability radio requirements have to be met. Further, network infrastructure equipment (or network nodes or base stations (BS), i.e., road side units (RU, e.g. BS with edge computing capabilities) are likely to play a very important role.
To enable autonomous driving, various radio communication modes are envisioned to be used in terms of broadcast (BC), multicast (MC) or unicast (UC). These radio communication modes are envisioned to be used for both, V2V and V2I radio links. Hence, a vehicular MTC device would have to support switching between (some of) these communication (transmission/reception) modes autonomously and/or with timely assistance from a serving RU.
A typical example scenario for autonomous driving is given below. According to such example scenario, vehicles are driving along a suburban freeway/highway. Sensor based mechanisms (utilizing sensors of respective vehicles) provide both safety on the road and efficient utilization of available road infrastructure (e.g. platooning, etc). LTE or 5G MTC radio communications complement the sensor based mechanisms.
In this scenario, one RU may be able cover a larger geographical area, and to assist the autonomous driving of several hundred (up to several thousands) vehicles at the time, potentially even to cover several roads.
It is conceivable that for such services and radio deployment conditions advanced processing power is needed. ITS specific algorithms are to be implemented in (or close to) the RU using network edge computing solutions, such as a radio applications cloud server (RACS) solution.
Such algorithms may rely on dedicated L1-L3 MTC radio procedures to be able to support switching between BC/MC/UC operating modes of involved communication nodes (RU and vehicles).
In relation to ITS radio communication it is known to inform road users (e.g. vehicles) and RU (infrastructure) about each other's position, dynamics and attributes. Utilizing this exchanged information, a cooperative awareness (CA) can be achieved.
In particular, it is known to achieve CA by regular exchange of information among vehicles (V2V, in general all kind of road users) and between vehicles and road side infrastructure (V2I and infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V)) based on wireless networks, called vehicle-to-X (V2X) networks. The transmitted periodic messages are known as CA messages (CAM), and their management is performed by a CA basic service as part of a facilities layer within ITS communication architecture.
The known principles have in common that these do not meet challenges posed by autonomous driving in radio-assisted road traffic management scenarios.
Thus, the problem arises that communication configurations may be suboptimal in view of specific requirements in particular of autonomous driving in radio-assisted road traffic management scenarios.
Hence, there is a need to provide for configuration of radio communication in radio-assisted road traffic management scenarios.